Art

Art And Spirituality

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Last column I wrote about how my experiments with art parodying spiritual bullshit and grifty scams had been intriguing.  I understood how art was part of human spirituality,  how it our love of beauty and form and such was a way to powerfully communicate deep experiences.  This made me realize it was time to explore something I’ve been trying to put into words about art and spirituality – my parodic work helped me talk serious stuff, go figure.

Simply put, I think art is inseparable from spirituality as art is the bridge that connects us to the Universe, the Tao, The Big Picture, because it connects to our thoughts and emotions.

The universe is vast and complex, our world is complex, our lives complex – even one person is complex. We’re here trying to understand reality, move within it, live within it – but it’s so big. This is why I like the term “The Tao,” which is essentially “the source of all this and no we can’t really speak of it.”

I’m honest on my biases. But let me go on.

Now we humans, we may be small, but we are aware of how huge everything is. We model the universe, we understand it, we analyze it. To work with it, with each other, to survive, grow, explore, or even just goof off, we have to find ways to handle this great Giant Allness. Philosophy and religion and spirituality are ways to organize and naviate this world and live inside it. Obviously some philosophies and religions don’t work out that well, but you get the idea – a bad plan is still a plan.

How do you connect us to our philosophies and meditations and spells and the greater universe? Well, humans have art. Art is where thought and emotion and sensation all come together, where a single picture or image can lead us to the bigness out there. Art is connection

Art is the bridge between us and The Big Picture, the way we line everything up to really think and feel and experience the greater world. From lovely philosophical writings to complex spiritual charts, awe-inspiring gods and gorgeous meditation hangings, those symmetries and poetries help us connect.  Those synergies of emotion and word and sensation come together and we get something larger than us in a way we can handle.

Art both focuses us and helps us get bigger.

In fact, isn’t most of religion and spirituality really art in the end? Temples and diagrams, pithy advice books and statues of the gods? It’s trying to synthesize infinity and vastness in some way you can work with it, get it, think it, and feel it.

The vast powers of the world are easily understood and appreciated and interacted with in the form of a god. You want to understand the states of existence, but the diagram of the Six Realms makes it easier (and hey, six is a manageable number). We drape art over the universe to make it both comprehensible – and to take us soaring into realms greater than ourselves.

Art, that love of form and color and combination, is the perfect tool to connect us to the universe in all its vast living potential.

I think I managed to sum up my feelings. I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but at least I said it – dare I say, made some art of it.

-Xenofact

The Map Isn’t The Territory But It Is Art

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For those of you familiar with my art work, you know I love surrealism and I love mashup work. Re-purposing art, finding combinations, and following my inspiration to create strange yet somehow insightful work. There’s a spiritual element to it as I’ve written about before, this kind of art seems to open a connection to something deeper, to part of the real me.

One of the things I’ve gotten into lately (early 2025) is creating “spiritual maps” using my surrealist mashup approach. You know those kind of things, attempts to portray cosmology or ethics or meditation as some kind of chart, or map, or other visual aid? We’ve all seen them, ranging from breathtaking creation to confusing charts that leave us feeling less enlightened (or possibly ripped off).

Well, I make parodies of them, with ideas of “Reincarnation Shards” or the “Primordial Historical Omniworld.” Complex diagrams (using repurposed art) and strange terminology that look like what you’d expect, but are mostly nonsense.

There’s something compelling about these “Spiritual Maps.” Creating my own surreal, parodic ones is both creatively stimulating, but compelling. I have multiple books on religion and alchemy, some of which (like Taschen’s Alchemy and Mysticism) are JUST metaphysical diagrams – and those are incredible to look through. Humans like taking the ineffable and putting it into lines and colors and shapes – even if our goal is to just sell some crappy book on the mystical.

(Honestly, some spiritual grifters are probably at least having FUN when they create their bullshit).

And while doing my work, I have come to understand something about the human mind. We humans do love visual portrayals of things. We love the symmetry and the detail, we love the use of colors and shapes. When that thing is spiritual, there’s something even more to it, that sense of a piece of art that takes us to something bigger.

In the classic “The Tao That Can Be Spoken Isn’t The True Tao” I know we can’t portray the truth on maps. Maps are just that, they’re not the territory, they’re not reality. A map is at best a guide or an inspiration – but those art important. More importantly, they’re inspiring when they’re ART.

A spiritual map that’s a few lines might not be inspiring (I Ching aside). But when a spiritual map is artistic, if it has those colors and lines and extras and details that inspire, then it’s exceptionally powerful. Art, in it’s forms, is critical to spirituality as it helps us connect thought, emotions, and the universe together. A good spiritual map that is also art can be amazingly effective – as long as we don’t take it too seriously.

When I make these parody maps I find it compelling even when I know it’s nonsense. I get why they can be addictive and compelling.

It’s funny, having started doing some surreal parody of ridiculous and graffiti spirituality, I find myself having these deep insights. The maps matter to us as long as we “grasp them little,” and I can see how powerful they are – all while basically messing around.

Art and spirituality aren’t far apart, no matter the kind. Which I may address next column.

-Xenofact

Art In Active Suspension

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In 2025 I have been vitally interested in the role of art in social evolution and opposing authoritarianism for the obvious reason that America made some bad decisions it quickly regretted.

Anyway, art is powerful. It’s a combination of words, symbols, colors, lyrics, music, or whatever that gets into your head. Good art is both its own little ecosystem but also is something your mind and feelings latch onto – the goal of good art is to be effective. Art is a tiny world that so connects with your mind it changes you..

When art changes you and others the world can change – and change for the better. Look how it can build social cohesion with shared symbols as well as undermine systems of control, gnawing away at oppressors. Art can inspire people to do even more art, creating a cascade of ideas no tyrant can stem both by sheer power and because most tyrants have the artist sense of blacktop.

Just take a look at history. The Orange Men, anti-fascist songs, pamphleteers, insulting songs, sarcastic essays, mocking plays. You even start wondering about non-political art – perhaps seemingly innocent creations were just subtle assaults on The System. How many revolutionary ideas have we just not noticed yet? How many changed us and we didn’t realize it?

How many ideas in art were not noticed by those who were their target until it was too late?

And that’s just art. Art-adjacent things like religion and spirituality and science also use art to change minds and inform. Look at meditation diagrams and deep symbolic representations. Look at gorgeous art from old science textbooks, drilling that knowledge into your head. Art is powerful.

These days, I think we need more revolutionary art. But in contemplating this I had a rather chilling thought.

What is art as I write about it in 2025? There’s so many ways to publish and print and record, yes, but we’re encouraged endlessly to turn it to profit. We’re asked to make art that fits what sells, that can be marketed, that can fit into certain formats and so on. The overall “art mindset” of our culture is one of making things that we can sell, and that helps bring money to the assorted services and vendors we have.

Now I’m all for people making money, but having seen obsessive attempts by people trying to find the right niche, sell the right story, I wonder. How much effort to make art goes into trying to make the “right” art? How much of our artistry is just understanding how to sell something we’re not quite as enthused about making?

There’s so much product that doesn’t feel like art.

How much of our art today is just contentmade to fit marketing specs and bring in money, not change the world. How many potential revolutionaries are making another tired novel, another just-the-same painting, another knock-off game? How many revolutions could happen that aren’t not because of oppression, but just our endless grind in pursuit of profit.

No, I’m not saying Capitalism is a deliberate attempt to crush art. I’m just noting it’s got some anti-art systems built in. Don’t even start me on so-called “AI.”

There are a lot of future revolutionaries out there, art-wise – as well as just plain good artists. I get the need to make a buck, but maybe that’s restraining them from what they can be. I wonder how we can help them because we need them – and always have.

-Xenofact